Christ Alone, SCS’s Cornerstone

One of the amazing things about building projects is the ceremony surrounding these major events. Ground breaking, ribbon cutting (join us on September 17th!), laying a cornerstone, and dedicating a building. With the Building Hearts and Minds campaign, we’re blessed to bring THREE cornerstones to our new, unified P-12 campus:

• 1911 Geele Ave Campus Cornerstone: “Het Zaad Zal Hem Dienen Psalm 22:31, Juni 1911” (in Dutch, this can be translated as “The Seed Will Serve Him,” or “Future Generations of this school will Serve the Lord.”)
• 1971 Sheboygan County Christian High School Campus: “1971 Christian High”
• 2021 Sheboygan Christian School, Unified P-12 Campus: “2021 His Faithfulness Continues through All Generations, Psalm 100:5”

These three stones will have a permanent and prominent place on our new, unified, P-12 Christian school campus. They will be right on the main entrance as we walk into the building. This will be an undeniable visual reminder of who our school is, why we are here, and who we serve.

I’m reminded of Joshua’s instructions to the people of Israel as they crossed the Jordan River into the promised land:

“Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, ⁶ that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ ⁷ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” -Joshua 4:5

These cornerstones that we install are a testament, literally written in stone, to God’s faithfulness to our school through the generations. This is true for you whether you’re entering your first year at SCS, or if you’re enrolling the fifth generation: you’re part of a school community that serves a faithful God!

As the years pass, when you walk into our building, from time to time, pause, reflect, remember, and remind your children what these stones mean and why they come to this school.

It’s Not About Us.

Stone outlasts the average human life. There’s not one living representative of our community who was present at the laying of the 1911 cornerstone who can tell us about that day. We have many community members still with us from the laying of the 1971 stone, (now seemingly impossibly 50 years ago!), but far less than we used to.

When you lay a cornerstone, you’re making a statement. For our school community, I’d like to suggest that the statement that we’re making is that it’s not about us. That this Christian community that we’re a part of is all bigger than us. That the God that we serve is bigger than us. We’re investing our time, talents, and treasure in something that will last for generations. And, by God’s good grace, if Jesus hasn’t returned, someone from our community some decades or centuries on will dig up the three cornerstones that we lay, and move them to a newly renovated campus, or even a new location, or zap them into some virtual reality school we can’t imagine today… who knows what the Lord has in store for Christian education?!

But that’s kind of the point. We don’t know what the future holds- but we know who holds it. The same God that has held our community through nearly 125 years of faithfulness will, we pray, hold our school for the next 125 years. As a school community, and by the Grace of God, we were born out of immigration and migration, we’ve endured the great depression, multiple global pandemics, two world wars, societal upheaval, feast, famine, enrollment plummeting, enrollment skyrocketing, and three different campuses. That same God heard us dedicate buildings to him in two different languages.

As we think about cornerstones at SCS, Let’s reflect on the lyrics of the familiar praise song/hymn, “Cornerstone.” I’ve swapped out two of the lyrics to apply to our school community. It’s my prayer for SCS as we prepare to install two old stones, and one brand new one in honor of our faithful God:

SCS’s hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness
We dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly trust in Jesus name

Christ alone
Cornerstone
Weak made strong
In the Savior’s love
Through the storm
He is Lord
Lord of all